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[00:00:00] This is Space Time Series 26 Episode 136 for broadcast on the 13th of November 2023 coming up on space time a record-breaking supermassive black hole NASA's Curiosity Rover clocks up 4,000 days on the red planet and a new view of all objects in the universe
[00:00:23] All that and more coming up on space time Welcome to Space Time with Stuart Gary Astronomers have discovered the most distant black hole ever seen The observations reported in the journal Nature Astronomy Suggest that black holes were already in existence just 470 million years after the Big Bang
[00:01:03] This black hole was discovered by combining data from NASA's Earth orbiting Chandra X-ray telescope with the web infrared space telescope The black hole was discovered in a galaxy named UHC 1 in the direction of the galaxy cluster Abell
[00:01:19] 2744 which itself is located some three and a half billion light-years away However, the web data shows that galaxy UHC 1 is much more distant than Abell 2744 in fact at some 13.2 billion light-years away That's a time when the universe itself was only 3% of its current age
[00:01:42] The observations suggest that this black holes in an early stage of growth that simply never been seen before It's at a point in its development where its mass is similar to that of its host galaxy
[00:01:55] The results may finally provide an answer as to how some of the first supermassive black holes in the universe were formed The study's lead author Akos Bogdan from the Center for Astrophysics at the Harvard Smithsonian
[00:02:09] Says web was needed to find this remarkably distant galaxy and Chandra was needed to find the supermassive black hole inside it The authors were able to take advantage of a gravitational lensing effect
[00:02:21] Which used the mass of the foreground galaxy cluster to magnify the light from the background galaxy Then over two weeks of observations by Chandra showed the presence of the intense Superheated x-ray emitting gas in the ancient galaxy a trademark signature of a feeding supermassive black hole
[00:02:40] The light from this early galaxy and the x-rays from the gas surrounding the supermassive black hole were being magnified by a factor of about four by the gravitational lens provided by Abell 2744 Enhancing the infrared signal detected by web and allowing Chandra to detect the faint x-ray source
[00:03:01] This discovery is important for understanding how some supermassive black holes can reach colossal masses So soon after the Big Bang See the questions always been do they form directly out of the collapse of massive clouds of gas
[00:03:16] Thereby creating black holes which are already tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of solar masses in size Or do they come from the supernova explosive deaths of the first stars?
[00:03:28] creating stellar mass black holes of around ten to a hundred solar masses which then grow through a combination of mergers and consuming other materials such as stars gas and planets The trouble is with the second method of stellar mass black holes growing
[00:03:44] there simply isn't enough time for supermassive black holes to get as big as they do as quickly as they are and So Bogdan and colleagues have now found strong evidence that the newly discovered ancient black hole was already born massive
[00:03:59] Its mass is estimated to be somewhere between 10 million and a hundred million solar masses That's based on the brightness and energy of its x-ray emissions by comparison Sagittarius a star supermassive black hole at the center of our own galaxy the Milky Way is only about
[00:04:17] 4.3 million solar masses and it's had at least 12 billion years to reach that mass Another interesting fact about the supermassive black hole in u8c1 is that it has a similar mass range to that of all the stars
[00:04:31] In the galaxy in which it resides and that's also in stark contrast The black holes of the centers of galaxies in the nearby universe Which is our own Sagittarius a star shows usually only exhibit about a tenth of a percent of the total mass of their host
[00:04:46] galaxy stars The large mass of the black hole at such a young age plus the amount of x-rays it produces And the brightness of the galaxy detected by web all agree with theoretical predictions The supermassive black holes forming not from the growth of stellar mass black holes
[00:05:03] But directly from the collapse of huge clouds of galactic gas This is space time still to come NASA's Curiosity rover clocks up 4,000 days on the surface of the Red Planet and a new view of
[00:05:19] All the objects in our universe all that and more still to come on space time NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has just celebrated its 4,000th day on the Red Planet The car-sized six-wheeled mobile laboratory landed in Gale Crater over 11 years ago on August the 5th
[00:05:55] 2012 on a mission to determine if ancient Mars could have been habitable and supported microbial life It quickly found the answer is yes with overwhelming Evidence of past pools that would have contained liquid water and signs of what would once have been streams
[00:06:13] flowing across the planets red Martian soil Today Mars is a desolate freeze-dried world a desert where life would find it difficult to exist But the evidence gathered by curiosity and its more modern twin perseverance
[00:06:29] Helps confirm that billions of years ago. The Red Planet was a warm wet world One capable of providing the sorts of conditions that would have been suitable for life to exist
[00:06:41] Mission managers are now making sure that curiosity which is now in its fourth extended mission is staying strong Despite all the wear and tear from its journey so far 4,000 Martian days after sitting its wheels on Gale Crater Curiosity remains busy conducting science
[00:07:00] The rover recently drilled its 39th core sample and dropped the pulverized rock into its laboratory for a detailed analysis To study whether ancient Mars had the right conditions to support microbial life
[00:07:13] The rover's been gradually ascending the base of the five kilometer high Mount Sharp the impact crater central peak I guess you can think of Mount Sharp as being a sort of geological layer cake of Martian history The different layers were all formed at different times
[00:07:30] And so they're providing insights into different periods on Mars and they're recording how the Red Planet's climate has changed over time This latest sample was collected from a target nicknamed Sequoia All the mission's current science targets are named after locations in California, Sierra, Nevada
[00:07:49] Scientists hope the sample will reveal more about how the climate and habitability of Mars has evolved as the region became enriched in sulfates Minerals that were likely formed in salty water that was beginning to evaporate as Mars began drying up billions of years ago
[00:08:05] Eventually all the Martian liquid surface water disappeared for good The types of sulfate and carbonate minerals that Curiosity's instruments have been identifying over the past year has helped scientists better Understand what Mars was like long ago
[00:08:21] Curiosity's lead project scientist Ashwin Vasavada from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California Says scientists have been anticipating these results for decades and now Sequoia will tell them even more
[00:08:35] A report in the Journal of Geophysical Research Planets shows how scientists have used data from Curiosity's chemistry and mineralogy instrument to discover a magnesium sulfate mineral called stachyite Which is associated with especially dry environments like Mars's modern climate
[00:08:51] The authors believe that after the sulfate minerals first formed in salty water billions of years ago as that water Evaporated these minerals transformed into stachyites as the climate continued drying out to its present state
[00:09:06] So in this way findings like this refined science's understanding of how the Mars of today came into being Despite having driven some 32 kilometers through punishingly cold environments bathed in dust and radiation Curiosity remains in good shape But there are problems
[00:09:25] Engineers are currently working to try and resolve an issue with one of the rover's main mass cam cameras the 34 millimeter focal length Left camera in addition to providing color images of the rover's surroundings each of the mass cams two cameras help scientists
[00:09:41] Determine the composition of rocks by the wavelengths of light or spectra that they reflect in different colors To do that mass camera lies on filters arranged on a wheel that rotates under each cameras lens However, since mid-september the left cameras filter wheels being stuck between filter positions
[00:10:00] The plan right now is to try and gradually nudge the filter wheel back towards its standard setting But if that fails scientists will need to rely on the higher resolution 100 millimeter focal length of the right mass cam camera using it as the primary color imaging system
[00:10:17] And that will affect how scientists scout for science targets and rover routes The right camera needs to take nine times more images than the left to cover the same area Scientists would also have a degraded ability to observe detailed color spectra from rocks at a distance
[00:10:34] Now this isn't the first problem to befall curiosity engineers have already resolved issues surrounding the wear and tear on the rovers drill system and with its robotic arm joints and Many software updates have been sent to curiosity to fix bugs and help add new capabilities to the rover
[00:10:52] that's made long drives easier for the rover reducing the wheel wear and tear that comes from steering an Earlier edition of attraction control algorithm also helps reduce wheel wear and tear when driving over sharp rocks
[00:11:07] Meanwhile the team right now are preparing for a break of several weeks as Mars's orbit takes the red planet behind the Sun from Earth's point of view and therefore out of direct communications with the earth an orbital period known as solar conjunction
[00:11:23] During this time plasma from the Sun can interact with radio waves potentially interfering with commands So engineers leave curiosity with a to-do list for the month and they'll wait to see what happens when they try to resume
[00:11:36] Communications on November the 29th needless to say we'll keep you informed This is space time still to come a new view of all objects in the universe and later in the science report
[00:11:51] The United States Air Force forced to blow up a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile during mid-flight following a technical issue The American failure happened at the same time as the Russians also tested one of their ICBMs That flight was successful all that and more coming up on space time
[00:12:27] a team of scientists ordering the chronological history of cosmology have developed the most comprehensive chart ever created of all the objects in the universe The research reported in the American Journal of Physics also offers some new ideas about how the universe may have begun 13.8 billion years ago
[00:12:46] The study's lead author honoree associate professor Charlie Lineweaver from the Australian National University Says he set out wanting to understand where all the objects in the universe came from Lineweaver says the universe began in a hot Big Bang
[00:13:00] There were no objects like protons atoms people planets stars dogs cats or galaxies But of course now the universe is full of them The relatively simple answer to where they all came from is that as the universe slowly cooled All these objects condensed out of a hot background
[00:13:20] To show this process in the simplest possible way Lineweaver and colleagues made two plots the first shows temperature and density of the universe as it expanded and cooled and The second plots the mass and size of all objects in the universe But the projects raised some important questions
[00:13:40] It turns out parts of this plot are well forbidden for want of a better term That's because objects cannot be denser than black holes Or they're so small that quantum mechanics blurs the very nature of what it really means to be a singular object
[00:13:56] And all that poses problems for existing cosmology hypotheses suggesting the universe began as a singularity Which is a point of infinite density and temperature in zero volume Lineweaver says the boundaries of the plots and what lies beyond them are also a major mystery
[00:14:14] At the smaller end the place where quantum mechanics in general relativity meet is the smallest possible object an Instanton this plot suggested the universe may well have started as an instanton which has a specific size and mass
[00:14:29] Rather than a singularity which as we mentioned earlier is a place of infinite density in zero volume on The larger end the plot suggests that if there really was nothing out there a complete vacuum beyond the observable universe The universe would be a large low-density black hole
[00:14:48] Lineweaver admits that would be a little scary and he says he has good reason to believe that's not the case I would say it's both complicated But it's also very simple
[00:14:57] but the simple idea is that the universe started out hot and dense and ever since it's been cooling down and expanding and That meant that things condensed out of this hot dense beginning
[00:15:09] It's the early evolution of the universe in the moments after the Big Bang and what's happened since then how would you describe that? I describe it as one phrase a proton is an ice cube is the way I like to say that and you might think of protons
[00:15:21] Being some fundamental particle, but it's not if in the Big Bang model the universe started out I wouldn't say infinitely hot and dense But very very hot and very very dense and the whole just easiest way to understand
[00:15:34] What's happened in the universe is it has cooled down and gotten less dense and when that happened lots of objects? Condensed out of the background and a proton in that sense is a condensed piece of water
[00:15:46] So it's a three quarks that before before you had protons neutrons. You had a quark gluon plasma Just that means just very hot and very dense and then it cooled down and then they came together and they bound together into a
[00:15:58] Proton so a proton is like a frozen if if water is quark gluon plasma, then a proton is an ice cube So that's why I say a proton is an ice cube. In other words everything you see around us. Let's go backwards in time
[00:16:11] Let's heat up everything what happens when you heat up everything? Well, the things start to burn So that's when molecules dissociate into atoms you heat those up and what happens and the electrons get go away They get ionized and then you have nuclei and electrons
[00:16:25] You heat that up further and then you get this quark gluon plasma you heat that up further and we're not quite sure But the model is that it gets hotter and hotter and hotter and what we've done is to create two plots to show the entire
[00:16:38] temperature history of the universe and the entire Density history of the universe and then we made a second plot which we call the plot of all objects and that means everywhere from a neutrino electrons protons viruses bacteria houses planets stars
[00:16:52] Galaxies super galaxies and even the entire universe so every object you can think of we have put on this plot in order to do That you have to make what's called a log log plot and that is not a linear linear plot
[00:17:05] But a log log plot that gives you a more larger dynamic range to include all of these objects It all comes to one point in space time I guess you'd call it if that existed at the point of singularity and you know, call it singularity even
[00:17:19] No, it's not a singularity is a word that you would only use if you thought that quantum mechanics was wrong and general relativity Was the only right thing we know, you know
[00:17:29] Sane physicists will say that the only thing you need to worry about is general relativity when you're talking about the origin of the universe That's just wrong. You'd need quantum cosmology. That means you need to combine quantum mechanics and general relativity
[00:17:40] We haven't been able to do that yet And so some of this paper is very speculative particularly in the first billionth of a second But that didn't deter us from extrapolating reasonable physics that we know further and further back in time using very explicit
[00:17:54] But speculative assumptions about what that was like. People think black holes are very very dense That's completely wrong The density of a black hole depends on its mass. The more massive a black hole is the less dense it is
[00:18:08] So the entire universe by the size given by the Hubble radius is the density of a black hole Which is kind of weird and so the whole universe when you plot it on this all objects plot It falls on the line with all the other black holes
[00:18:23] And this radius isn't just a distance between the singularity and the event horizon It's the size of a black hole and you could call it the distance between singularity But I would not use term singularity because we think that there is no singularity inside of a black hole
[00:18:38] It's something else that we haven't been able to figure out It's maybe a little bit like a singularity, but it might be a singularity That's held up prevented from being a singularity by quantum uncertainty. So we're not sure about it. Maybe it's a brain a
[00:18:49] Membrane for another universe. I do not know and nobody else does and so that's beyond the scope But the interesting thing about when you plot all these objects You have a line where all the black holes line up on this one line called the Schwarzschild radius
[00:19:05] And the universe lines up on that the black hole in the center of our galaxy lines up on that three million or four Million solar mass black hole ten or fifty solar mass black holes also line up
[00:19:15] These are the kind they're being discovered with but gravitational waves and even smaller black holes line up and you can get an arbitrarily Small black hole and if you keep extrapolating you get to a point called an instanton
[00:19:27] This is the smallest black hole you can have and essentially it's called an instanton because if you have one of those it goes boom Immediately explodes at the Planck temperature So it's very very unstable
[00:19:38] But we know that a billion years ago ten billion years ago thirteen billion years ago The whole universe was on that line It just follows that lines exactly in the direction of an instanton whether the universe was an instanton at their earliest moments
[00:19:53] We don't know but it's one of the best candidates for what you might call others might call the initial singularity I would call it the initial condition of universe in any case
[00:20:01] That's way above the level of this paper this level the paper says here's a plot of all objects Isn't that interesting look at these other questions that it raises and that other question is is the universe of black hole?
[00:20:12] It also raises the question of how come there are no objects that are smaller than protons Can't you get objects that are smaller than not? Let's say the tau particle which is the smallest one on here and why aren't there particles where their objects in this region?
[00:20:25] Why aren't there objects in that region? So it's a very informative plot and I think it raises more questions than it answers But I think that's some of the best sciences like that. I take it QG's quantum gravity. Yeah quantum gravity
[00:20:36] I like we know what we should have described that point as doubly excluded or doubly forbidden I should have put a DF there because it's forbidden by both gravity and by quantum uncertainty Do you like gravity loopy or stringy? I don't have a preference. I'm not good enough
[00:20:51] I could I'm not a good enough theorist to Have any preference there particularly because there's no good evidence So one way or the other people are the general relativists who are working on that are very very theoretical and they don't have to
[00:21:02] Do data analysis and I know how to do data analysis But in order to do that you need data and they don't have any data So I am uninformed and have very few theoretical prejudices Yeah, either way out of the many mysteries which come out of this
[00:21:14] What's the one that intrigues you the most? The one that intrigues me the most is the giant the big picture how you can understand this whole picture of what has happened to
[00:21:23] The universe over this its entire lifetime. That's what I appreciate. I would call it the overview effect I've always been in love with big picture and you know
[00:21:31] the comprehensive view of the entire universe because that's I think one of the best ways to figure out who you are and how we Got here and that's really a big picture that I appreciate most about this It extrapolates to earlier times than any other plot
[00:21:45] You will see it we've advertised it as the most comprehensive plot of the universe ever made So I'll stick with that and that's good enough for me. A lot of it is very Convinced when I say conventional, I guess that's not the right term
[00:21:59] But a lot of it is very agreed to physics in terms of how the universe evolved yeah, it is except for the first billionth of a second and But the weird thing about it we extrapolated all the way back to the plank time
[00:22:16] So we extrapolate like orders of magnitude in time early and smaller in space as well. So it really does involve extrapolation to very very early times and very very small scales, but as you say, it's based on conventional understanding and
[00:22:33] It could be wrong. It's very speculative. But when you're doing speculative things I think it's very important to be explicit and that's what we are in this paper
[00:22:40] We're explicit and so that means if we've made a mistake where people can find it out and they know exactly what we did We didn't wave our hands and say or
[00:22:49] There's magic here. No, we said hey taking this normal conventional physics and extrapolating it in the most conventional way This is the plot you end up beyond here. They'd be dragons. Well beyond the plank scale with their dragons
[00:23:01] That is even in the plot has a region called some plank sub Plankton unknown So these are at times and scales that are less than the plank scale Which is 10 to the minus 40 30 seconds and 10 to the minus 32 centimeters
[00:23:16] So that's a very small scale in which people think that those little scientists have speculated It is just speculated about space-time and that's named your point That there might not be space-time on a scale less than that
[00:23:28] In other words space-time might be discrete on the scale of the plank scale. So and that was something there was a time I'm saying this positively. There was a time when there was no gravity, but I can't imagine that time
[00:23:41] Well, you have to remember that as you get to higher and higher temperatures these forces unite and the you know The gut scale is when the three forces electromagnetism the weak and the strong Combine and so you wouldn't talk about them as individual forces
[00:23:56] Similarly is a presumably a scale at which gravity joins them That's the scale of the theory of everything and so you wouldn't talk about just gravity back then because it will have been joined
[00:24:06] With the other three forces does gravity have to be a force but could just be an effect Yes, I would agree with that and but when so it's an effect And so I'm not quite sure how if that's the case and it might be the case
[00:24:21] I don't think that gets around the idea that it's unified with these other forces In other words, there's scales and energy. Well one way to picture this very very early universe is there
[00:24:32] Imagine you know how you have bubbles in a you know in a soda pop pop pop coming into existence Well, imagine that those are black holes coming into existence on the Planck scale That would still be consistent with describing gravity as an effect rather than a force
[00:24:45] But it would still also you have to be combined with energies above the gut scale with strong nuclear force weakness of the force electromagnetism is the universe simply a large-scale version of the Kazimir effect well Into and out of existence basically well the relationship between normal matter and
[00:25:06] virtual particles I mean what you're talking about in the Kazimir effect is that you're changing the structure of the vacuum and the vacuum is what is That that's particles coming into and out of existence
[00:25:15] So we call that virtual particles the Kazimir effect comes into existence only when you have two planes that are non-conducting That are conducting very close together I think you're right that you do have particles coming to out of existence
[00:25:27] But you always have that type of noise kind of like a virtual Brownian motion And that is certainly true on the other hand the Kazimir effect is when you take these two things and put them two planes or two metal plates close
[00:25:40] And then you change the vacuum in the but your question about whether the universe was a giant Kazimir effect That that becomes an interesting question when you get earlier and earlier because you have a space-time horizon You have a C times a time
[00:25:54] Let's say you get back to 10 to the minus 30 seconds after the Big Bang and then you ask the question well wait a minute Does that constrain the virtual particles that can come in and out of existence?
[00:26:04] Is that like putting boundaries on the wavelengths of the virtual particles? I do not know the answer that question I've asked many theoretical physicists physicists that question and I am left confused And I think they are confused about it
[00:26:17] But it's a very interesting topic that I think will take more and more time from quantum Cosmologists to figure that out, but it's a good very good question
[00:26:25] The scale that you guys have come up with it shows the picture it doesn't really answer many questions does it it raises more questions Well, I think it does raise a lot of questions, and that's why it's called all objects in some questions
[00:26:38] But let's not underestimate the importance of showing all objects on one plot the mere fact of doing that implies For example let me give you an example of what I mean in figure one
[00:26:49] We show that the temperature history and the density history of the universe from the Planck time until today now in order to do that It's not that simple because you need something called the relativistic degrees of freedom in other words as the universe gets hotter and hotter
[00:27:03] There are more degrees of freedom over which to distribute the energy well it's kind of like when you have a venture if you know the high school physics where you learn about the
[00:27:12] Degrees of freedom of a molecule it can vibrate this way and that way in this way and the more degrees of freedom it has The more heat capacity it has and that means you put energy in and the temperature doesn't go up
[00:27:24] Why because the heat the energy is being distributed over more degrees of freedom the same thing is happening in the early universe as you get Hotter and hotter the particles get more energetic you have more relativistic particles around and so you don't
[00:27:37] necessarily get a higher and higher temperature because you can have your Exciting different degrees of freedom and that was a complicated thing that we had to understand and we had to figure out
[00:27:47] What's the degrees of freedom as you go to higher and higher and higher and higher energy? It was very speculative, but we relied on the best data for the what's called G star
[00:27:56] And then we just extrapolated that and it could be this could be this and so we had large error bars But even though we included those large error bars We propagated them through as good scientists should and that
[00:28:07] Led to the temperature result and the density result that we plotted we also had to assume inflation at a certain time And that's an interesting process to assume a specific model of inflation to talk about the temperature and density
[00:28:21] The universe even before inflation well, we haven't even explained cosmic inflation yet. Have we it's a theory that seems to be Answers questions it lets us know why the universe is so uniform in all directions
[00:28:33] But it doesn't really explain why it happened and why it stopped you're right on the other hand it one thing It does explain and that is when you look at the cosmic microwave background at the largest angular scales You see some anisotropies
[00:28:48] And if you were just thinking causally and you didn't have an inflation period you couldn't explain them But with inflation you can and the explanation is well There are quantum uncertainties that you can't get around and these have been blown up and expanded
[00:29:02] And that's what we're seeing in the large angular scale cosmic microwave background So that's something that cannot be explained in the standard Big Bang model And so that's probably the best evidence for inflation along with the what's called n n equals 1
[00:29:15] That's the tilt of the spectrum when you plot it of the micro background fluctuations Do you include anything about dark matter or dark energy in your calculations? Yeah. Yeah, we assumed the lambda CDM the standard model and so we have when
[00:29:31] We have an omega and the matter is the dark matter plus the normal matter and that's about 30% of the energy content of the universe 70% of the lambda and we assume the Hubble constant of about 70
[00:29:45] So we're just assuming the stock standard conventional lambda CDM model and that's what we've plotted here But that is important when you're talking about the temperature and the density of the universe as a function of time all the way back
[00:29:56] To the Planck scale that's honorary associate professor charlie lineweaver from the australian national university And this is space time And time now to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news in science this week with a science report
[00:30:28] Scientists have discovered that the northern greenland ice shelves are rapidly retreating and have already lost more than 30 percent of their total volume since 1978 The findings reported in the journal nature communications will mean severe consequences for sea level rise
[00:30:45] Scientists use thousands of satellite images along with climate modeling to analyze glacier climate ocean interactions in northern greenland Finding a substantial and widespread increase in ice shelf mass loss Since the early 2000s
[00:31:00] They found that ice shelves that were once considered stable are mostly losing ice from the bottom due to warming oceans And three of them have already collapsed completely
[00:31:10] Of the five that remain ice shelf mass loss is already destabilizing nearby glaciers and they'll continue to retreat as the ocean continues to warm For years scientists have pondered the question of how starfish can survive with just arms and a body and no head
[00:31:26] Well, it now turns out researchers got it all wrong Starfish are pretty much all head. The problem is starfish or more correctly sea stars Don't fit the typical animal body pattern
[00:31:39] With a head at one end a torso and limbs in the middle and a tail at the other end To try and resolve the mystery scientists at stanford university in the university of california berkeley undertook detailed genetic studies of the sea creatures
[00:31:53] And they were surprised to find gene signatures usually associated with head development just about everywhere in juvenile starfish On the other hand the expression of genes that usually code for torso and tail segments were largely missing
[00:32:05] The findings reported in the journal nature also show that molecular signatures of starfish Typically associated with the frontmost portion of the head were localized to the middle of each of the sea stars arms With these signatures becoming progressively more posterior moving out towards the arm's edges
[00:32:22] The research all suggests that far from being headless Starfish pretty much lost their bodies to become nothing but heads crawling along the seafloor A full-scale investigation is now underway After mission managers were forced to initiate a self-destruct order on a minute man three
[00:32:41] Intercontinental ballistic missile shortly after it was launched on a test flight from the vandenberg space force base in california The self-destruct order was issued following an anomaly during the early stages of the test flight
[00:32:53] Specialized launch analysis group has now been assembled to scrutinize the incident and determine the cause With great difficulty the mission was launched With growing problems in the middle east iranian surrogates attacking us and israeli forces
[00:33:07] Russia attacking the ukraine and china getting increasingly belligerent in the south china sea This wasn't the best time for a major missile failure by the united states The failure also came as russian president vladimir putin signed a new law revoking russia's
[00:33:24] ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty The 1996 treaty outlaws all nuclear explosions including live tests of nuclear weapons The kremlin has repeatedly been threatening a nuclear escalation of its invasion of ukraine
[00:33:39] That comes in the wake of growing western aid to kiev and ever tightening sanctions against moscow Last week putin oversaw ballistic missile drills that were described as practice for massive
[00:33:51] Last week putin oversaw ballistic missile drills that were described as practice for massive retaliatory nuclear strikes against an unnamed enemy These included the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles from submerged russian nuclear submarines Unlike the american missile test the kremlin says the russian tests were all successful
[00:34:15] And now for something completely different Just when you thought the bermuda triangle was no longer a thing comes news of a new triangle mystery this one in alaska Tim mendham from australian skeptic says forget bermuda
[00:34:28] The alaska triangle is the place to be for the latest in mysterious vanishing planes energy vortexes and strange ufo sightings The bermuda triangle still exists at times. There's still a few examples people raise it every so often when they need to
[00:34:43] Explain it's not really a big thing anymore. No, no, it's sort of passed out But there's always a new one and now there's the alaska triangle which is an area of alaska
[00:34:51] Which is what kievic I think and anchorage and juneau and you'd make a triangle. Why if there was a triangle? I don't know but they're saying that there are things like energy vortexes and mysterious disappearances
[00:35:01] And uh, there was a case that a leading congressman disappeared in the 1970s I think he was in a small plane. So they set up a big search party, uh didn't find anything So you had magnetic irregularities all sorts of different phenomena hallucinations auditory experiences disorientation, etc
[00:35:17] Naturally this leads to the idea of a triangle with all sorts of mysterious forces. Well, it's got to be what else could it be? Well planes crash people disappear down crevasses hiding in caves and get an avalanche This is area of wilderness you get eaten by bears
[00:35:31] Eat my this is an area of real wilderness where you know A lot of things can happen to you and you get covered up pretty quickly because especially if it's snowing And your tracks can be covered up very quickly because it snows all the time in some areas
[00:35:41] So there's it's like the bermuda triangle. There's no real mystery there. It's a created mystery You know, they're using evidence, which is poor evidence to substantiate theories of dangers Which none of which exist that's tim mendem from australian skeptics and that's the show for now
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